SYDNEY — Nurses at public hospitals across New South Wales struck for 24 hours Sept. 1, fighting for a pay raise and increased staffing in their third strike this year. This time, the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association organized rallies at 14 hospitals across Sydney, and in dozens of regional cities and towns across the state.
“If we are ‘heroes’ of the pandemic, why won’t they negotiate with us?” Kelvin Ozurumba, president of the nurses’ union branch at Canterbury Hospital in southwest Sydney, told a spirited rally of around 40 outside the hospital. “What we want,” in addition to a 7% wage increase, he said, “is safe patient care.” The rally drew an enthusiastic response from drivers in cars, trucks and buses.
Nurses are demanding a nurse-to-patient ratio of 1-to-3 in emergency departments and 1-to-4 elsewhere in the hospitals. Nurses in the maternity ward at Canterbury Hospital said they were often looking after six or seven mothers each, sometimes double that on night shift, and the babies on top of that.
Others told the Militant they face constant pressure to work overtime. “We work so hard,” Ferliza Resty, a nurse at the hospital, said. “As a mother of three I also know how expensive things are getting. We need a pay rise as well as ratios.”
The strike came after nurses rejected an offer of 3% from the state government. The official inflation rate is 6.1% and rising, but for workers it is actually much more than that. Many food and grocery items have increased by more than 12% in the past year, electricity prices have been jacked up 18% and rents in the Canterbury-Bankstown district have increased by over 14%.